1. Technical Field
This disclosure relates generally to managing software maintenance in a data processing system and more specifically to defining and enforcing enterprise wide software service recommendations in the data processing system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Software updates provided by a software vendor typically have different associated priorities in accordance with each respective customer among a set of customers. For example a fix for increasing application server performance by predefined percentage on particular platform might be of no interest for some customers, for example customers not using the particular platform, while being critically important for other customers using the particular platform and waiting for performance improvements.
Currently, each customer typically creates and implements a solution to track software updates deemed to be important and force a specific level of software to be deployed in the respective customer environments. While the described process enables customization, the approach may also create inflated overall cost of ownership for the software due to the added overhead and may also result in customer dissatisfaction. Examples of currently implemented software maintenance management techniques exist.
In one example, a previous management process prescribes a set of process steps that should be considered when patches and software maintenance are installed. However enablement of enforcement for deploying relevant fixes is not present.
In another example, a policy system is described in which an administrator is enabled to filter out computers available on a network when installing a specific software patch. In this system, all updates are centrally driven by the policy system and all computers are online when updates are pushed out in the patch installation process. Using this technique all computers that are online receive the updates at the same time.
In another example, a mechanism for automated software updates rollout for various software components in the networked system is presented. The mechanism simply pushes the updates out in the patch installation process. In another example, a process and mechanism to facilitate distribution of information associated with fix availability from different software vendors to enterprises is presented. In another example, a tool and mechanism to determine whether a certain patch is applicable to a specific computer system is described. In another example, a disclosure advocates only relevant fixes should be installed on specific components but does not provide mechanism for enforcing the relevancy of software maintenances as well as enforcing deployment and installation rules associated with the maintenance.